Teddy Ruxpin said:
I also seem to recall "a walk in the snow" between the German Chancellor and Trudeau during which Canada's commitment to keeping the Brigade operational were "discussed". The Leos followed soon after - in minimal numbers. If I recall my history correctly (yes, I'm too young to remember - even at nearly 40, sorry guys!), we were looking at Scorpions to replace the Centurion...eek!
It was,
I think, a complicated time.
Trudeau was busy, in the late '60s and throughout the 70s, playing his childish, pacifist and
anti-capitalist role which, as others have pointed out, went down and still goes down very well amongst many, many Canadians.
Trudeau, who had little knowledge and less skill in economic and trade matters was off on his disastrous
third option scheme â “ through which he hoped to persuade Canadian businessmen that they should sell to buy from a remote, highly protectionist, expensive market rather than the big, free, easy one close to home: a policy of absolutely monumental stupidity which still attracts favourable comment from the economic illiterate today.
Trudeau had just (Oct '68) cut Canada's commitment to NATO (Europe) in half â “ a commitment with real, nuclear tipped military value and even greater symbolic value to, especially, the Dutch and Germans. He delivered a kick in the slats to Europe with his left foot and then shoved his right foot in saying, â Å“Hey, Europe: Buy more and more of our products!â ? It took a special kind of stupidity to do all that. He really, really was out of his intellectual depth whenever he had to deal with grownups.
Anyway, he and Helmut Schmidt were personal and philosophic friends â “ socialist, anti-nationalist
one-worlders and that sort of thing. Schmidt is reputed to have told Trudeau, quite bluntly, (See: Canada, NATO and the Bomb (1988))
â Å“No tanks, no trade.â ? He didn't mean just any tanks, either: Trudeau came home from the famous (early '70s)
walk in the garden and ordered the procurement of German Leopard tanks despite the fact that he, personally, had avowed: â Å“No tanks in Canada.â ?
We got the tanks but not the trade: Schmidt
may have been Trudeau's friend but Valerie Giscard d'Estang was calling the shots in Europe and Canada â “ along with the rest of the world â “ was shut out. Things may, almost certainly would have been different had we bought 350
French tanks and 250
French airplanes, but ...
(One of the reasons we went the Cougar/Grizzly >>> LAV III/
Stryker route,
I think, was that the minister and DM of the day interpreted Trudeau's statement, in the House of Commons, to be an absolute prohibition: No tanks, period. The Direct Five Support vehicle programme was in full swing when I was in the operational requirements staff in the mid '70s. While the UK
Scorpion and the American
Stingray light tanks were popular amongst
some armoured officers (including folks like Jimmy Fox and Jack Dangerfield?) who wanted to keep, at least, a 'training tank' which might, also, be useful in low intensity operations â “
my, personal, recollection is that the programme was aimed squarely and exclusively at wheeled vehicles â “ tank = tracks, therefore no tanks = no tracks, not even light ones.)
Off topic: I was, still am, fascinated with the idea of 'light' forces with air-transportable tanks. I remain convinces that the proper role of armour is to let the infantry do the heavy lifting and then dash through the gap and shoot up the enemy's cook-houses and supply depots. A few tanks, even light tanks, clanking about on the low or mid intensity battlefield can have the sort of
shock effect which wheeled mobile gun systems will never, in my personal opinion, achieve.